The topics of conversation covered by the possessors of speech rights were taken up by the general multitude; their expressions, sentence structures, tones of speech, and so on fell into common usage; power was constituted in this linguistic diffusion, was realized and affirmed by these processes of linguistic expansion and outward radiation. The term "speech rights" exposes the linguistic basis of power. A mature governing regime or a powerful faction will always have its own powerful linguistic system, is always accompanied by a series of official documents, meetings, ceremonies, lecturers, key texts, memorials, theories, propaganda slogans, works of art, even new place-names or new reign titles, thus acquiring and establishing its own speech rights throughout all society. Power sources that fail to acquire their own speech rights are the rabble who follow those with wealth or might, bandits who manage to cut down the government troops a few times on their progress toward the capital city: even if they briefly gain the upper hand, their success is inevitably short-lived.

This point is neatly illustrated by the great stock the holders of power set by documents and meetings. Documents and meetings are both the key to safeguarding power and the best way of reinforcing speech rights. Mountains of paperwork and oceans of meetings are a fundamental or integral part of, and genuine source of excitement within, the bureaucratic way of life. Even if meetings are river upon river of empty talk, even if they haven't the slightest real use, most bureaucrats still derive a basic level of enjoyment from them. The reason is very simple: it's only at these moments that the chairman's podium and the mats of the listening masses will be placed in position, that hierarchies will be clearly demarcated, giving people a clear consciousness of the existence (or lack thereof) and degree (large or small) of their own speech rights. Only here do the speech rights of those with power and influence, on passing through the ears of the masses, through notebooks, megaphones, and so on, enjoy support from coercive forms of dissemination and broadcasting. Only in this kind of an environment do those with power and influence, immersed in the language with which they themselves are familiar, become aware that their power is receiving the warm, moist, nurturing, nourishing, safeguarding protection of language.

All this is often far more important than the actual aims of the meeting.

And by the same basic principle, those with power and influence are filled with a natural sense of vigilance and animosity toward language they are not themselves used to or familiar with. During the Cultural Revolution, Marx and Lu Xun enjoyed the highest respect in China, became the only two out of a few last, great figures who could still be found in the empty, deserted bookshops. And even so, reading Marx and Lu Xun then was still extremely dangerous. A book of Marx's that I had in the countryside nearly became proof of my "reactionary" crimes- "That Educated Youth's reading a book by Marx," the commune cadre said, "not a book by Chairman Mao! What on earth is he thinking? What on earth is he feeling?"

I realized that the commune cadres neither meant nor dared to oppose Marx; neither did they know what that book by Marx (The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte) said, whether it subverted their controls over forestation or family planning or evening out resources. No, they had no idea about all this, and neither did they much care. They glared and raged at any language they didn't understand very well, feeling their speech rights implicitly challenged and threatened.

Throughout the twentieth century, as modernism broadened its influence, abstract painting, absurdist theater, stream-of-consciousness novels, and surrealist poetry disrupted the status quo, bringing antiorthodox cultural phenomena such as hippies, feminism, rock music, and the like in their wake. Interestingly, as these new phenomena emerged, almost every single one was viewed as a sinister political conspiracy. Bourgeois newspapers attacked Picasso's abstract paintings as "evil Soviet trickery aimed at the downfall of Western democratic society," as "propaganda for Bolshevik ideology," while Elvis Presley and John Lennon, the representative member of the Beatles, were suspected by churches and governments alike of being "underground spies for the Communist Party," of aiming to "corrupt the younger generation, to destroy them before the battle with communism had begun"-their music was continually prohibited on US army bases in Europe. All Red regimes, meanwhile, do pretty much the same thing, and over the last few decades all modern art, whether high or low, has been officially denounced, defined in official documents and university textbooks as the "avant-garde of peaceful evolution," as "the declining and degenerate ideology of the Western bourgeoisie," as "spiritual toxins aimed at poisoning youth," and so on.

These reactions represent, of course, a defensive excess. This fact was later gradually recognized by both sides, which, to greater or lesser degrees, relaxed their levels of surveillance, even became willing to make use of the expressive power of these various new cultural forms for their own purposes, using rock music to praise Yanan (Mao's revolutionary center in Northwest China) or Nanniwan (a barren area of Northwest China where the Communist army struggled for self-sufficiency), for example; or using abstract paintings to promote the export of clothes.

Of course, it would be overly ingenuous to regard these reactions merely as forms of defensive excess. Any unfamiliar form of language, in fact, is an uncontrollable form of language, and hence an uncontrollable form of power. Regardless of its external political markers, it will exercize a real centrifugal force, creating obstructions and interruptions within information channels, resulting, to varying degrees, in the weakening, in the dissolution of the speech rights of power-holders.

Maqiao people, it seemed, had achieved a penetrating understanding of power-holding, had seen through it all a long time ago, in summarizing power thus as speech rights, as talking.

Let's see who in Maqiao had speech rights:

1. Women didn't generally have speech rights. They were used to not interrupting when men were speaking and just stayed on the sidelines, breast-feeding a child or stitching shoe soles. The cadres never asked them to join in the big Village Meetings of the People.

2. Young people didn't have speech rights. From a very young age, they got used to hearing age-old admonitions such as "children listen as grown-ups talk," and would always let older people have their say first. Even if they disagreed or, more often than not, muttered behind their backs, it would have been an unthinkable heresy to talk back to their faces.

3. Poor families didn't have speech rights. The wealthy could huff and puff, while the poor could only wheeze: feeling they lacked dignity, poor people were usually unwilling to show their faces where there were a lot of people about, and so inevitably missed out on a great many opportunities for talking to others. And there was another custom in Maqiao: those in debt, even if they only owed half a pint of unhusked grain, weren't allowed to take important roles at village weddings and funerals, such as master of ceremonies, master of sacrifices, matron of honor, so as not to bring the host family bad luck. The place nearest the tea cabinet, by the brazier in each household, was the most prominent place to sit and was called the head place; no guest except the creditor could casually sit down there, unless an insult to the host was intended. All these regulations ensured that speaking power was amassed in the wealthy fists of those with lending power.

It appears from the above that speech rights were decided by a combination of factors, such as sex, age, and wealth. Even more important, of course, were political factors-Benyi, as the local Party Secretary, was Maqiao's highest power holder, and whenever he spoke his voice would boom out with gravitas, with solemn pledges, as if he meant what he said, as if no protest would be brooked. As time went on, bellowing became something of a habit with him; his throat would often be worn out, producing more wheeze than voice, but still he'd be blathering all over the place. Even when walking alone, hands behind his back, he couldn't keep his mouth shut and sometimes ended up talking to himself, posing questions he answered himself. "Could beans grow here?" "Go fuck a dragon, the ground's so wet the roots'd go rotten." "If we mixed in some silt that might do the trick." "What're you doing hauling stuff all over the place? If you've got time to haul mud, you'd be better off growing a bit more grain on the hill." "Awakened son of a…"